books.google.com - The year is 1859, and it's Christmastime on a Virginia Plantation. The slaves are setting up the Big House -- where their masters live -- for the festivities. The Big House is filled with warmth, colorful decorations, and delicious food... but there is talk of war and a sense that times may be changing....https://books.google.com/books/about/Christmas_in_the_Big_House_Christmas_in.html?id=Yz8lAQAAIAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareChristmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters

Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters

The year is 1859, and it's Christmastime on a Virginia Plantation. The slaves are setting up the Big House -- where their masters live -- for the festivities. The Big House is filled with warmth, colorful decorations, and delicious food... but there is talk of war and a sense that times may be changing. In the quarters -- where the slaves live conditions are poor, dirty, and cold, but the slaves are filled with hope for better times ahead, and they sing songs of freedom.

Moving deftly between two worlds, this beautifully illustrated book by award-winning authors Patricia and Fredrick McKassick is a rich historical tale as well as a holiday treat.

From inside the book

LibraryThing Review

User Review - dscalia - LibraryThing

In "Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters" the reader learns of the times just before the Civil War. It depicts the life on plantations in Virginia. This story is depicted from the ...Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review - megjwal - LibraryThing

Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters by Patricia C. McKissack It’s Christmas time on the Virginia Plantation in 1859. The slaves are told to clean the house and decorate it for ...Read full review

About the author (2002)

Patricia C. McKissack was born on August 9, 1944 in Smyrna, Tennessee. She received a bachelor's degree of arts in English from Tennessee State University in 1964 and a master's degree in early childhood literature and media programming from Webster University in 1975. After college, she worked as a junior high English teacher and a children's book editor. Since the 1980's, she and her husband Frederick L. McKissack have written over 100 books together. Most of their titles are biographies with a strong focus on African-American themes for young readers. Their early 1990s biography series, Great African Americans included volumes on Frederick Douglass, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson. Their other works included Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers and Days of Jubilee: The End of Slavery in the United States. Over their 30 years of writing together, the couple won many awards including the C.S. Lewis Silver Medal, the Coretta Scott King Award for Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters, the Jane Addams Peace Award, and the 1998 Virginia Hamilton Award for making a contribution to the field of multicultural literature for children and adolescents, as well as the NAACP Image Award for Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman?. She also writes fiction on her own. She won the 1993 Newberry Honor Book Award for The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural and the Caldecott Medal for Mirandy and Brother Wind.